Agile Software Development in Healthcare: A Synthetic Scoping Review

Abstract

Even though software can be found everywhere, software development has encountered many problems, resulting in the emergence of new alternative development paradigms. Among them, agile approaches are the most popular. While much research has been published about agile software development (ASD) in general, there is a lack of documented knowledge about its use in healthcare. Consequently, it is not clear how ASD is used in healthcare, how it performs, and what the reasons are for not using it. To fill this gap, we performed a quantitative and qualitative knowledge synthesis of the research literature harvested from Scopus and Web of Science databases, employing the triangulation of bibliometrics and thematic analysis to answer the research question What is state of the art in using ASD in the healthcare sector? Results show that the research literature production trend is positive. The most productive countries are leading software development countries: the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany. The research is mainly published in health informatics source titles. It is focused on improving the software process, quality of healthcare software, reduction of development resources, and general improvement of healthcare delivery. More research has to be done on scaling agile approaches to large-scale healthcare software development projects. Despite barriers, ASD can improve software development in healthcare settings and strengthen cooperation between healthcare and software development professionals. This could result in more successful digital health transformation and consequently more equitable access to expert-level healthcare, even on a global level.